On 8 April 2019, Yusuf was sentenced to seven years in prison for accepting bribes from Ahmadi totaling Rp 1.05 billion (US$74,084) in exchange for granting number of infrastructure projects in the regency.
Irwandi was arrested along with Bener Meriah Regent Ahmadi and eight other individuals following a suspicious transaction involving provincial and regency officials, according to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
[citation needed] As the tsunami's waters rose inside the prison, Irwandi fled to the Musholla (prayer room) on the second floor while walls crumbled around him.
[4] In the aftermath of the tsunami, the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian central command negotiated a peace settlement, and Irwandi renounced his separatist agenda.
No longer in conflict with the Indonesian government, the former rebel liaised with the international non-governmental organizations whose presence paved the way for Aceh's first democratic election in almost 30 years.
It was a major victory for Irwandi, who won 39.3% of the popular vote, as announced by Public Issue Network and Indonesian Survey Circle.
He allegedly surprised supporters when information was uncovered that, on 25 August 2011, he had quietly granted a concession to palm oil supplier PT Kallista Alam which authorised the destruction of a peat swamp forest that is one of the last refuges of the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan.
[17] Some of the indigenous peoples took the about-face from the so-called 'Green Governor' personally, calling it a betrayal of their homeland and of his previous environmental credentials.
[18] On a legal level, though, many environmental organisations argued that Irwandi's decision breached a presidential moratorium – part of an international deal to save Indonesia's forests – as well as legislation protecting a conservation area where the Tripa swamp is located.
Litigation was filed by environmental groups known as WAHLI, challenging the legality of this concession and contending it was granted in an area of protected forest and further violated a moratorium on peatlands conversion.
[20] Mainstream media outlets and environmental organisations report that these fires could lead to the imminent and immediate extinction of the animal inhabitants of the Tripa swamp, including over 200 orangutans.
[22] [23] On 3 April 2012, the Council of Judges of the Banda Aceh National Administrative Court dismissed the WALHI case on jurisdictional grounds.
[24] The court acknowledged that the permit that Irwandi approved allowing PT Kallista Allam to convert the Tripa peat swamp into palm oil plantations was indeed located inside the protected Leuser Ecosystem and thus in violation of current Indonesian law.
[23] Irwandi had spoken out amid the considerable attention that emerged in the wake of the Tripa peat swamp fires and the WALHI litigation.
In July 2012 it was reported that officials from the national Environment Ministry who visited the Tripa area said that there were 'strong indications' that deliberate burning had been taking place in the region to convert the area to an oil palm plantation,[29] On 30 August 2012, judges of the Higher Administrative Court in Medan granted the WAHLI appeal, casting further doubt on Yusuf's one-time claims to be the "Green Governor."
The ruling contained among other things: 1) the granting of the WALHI appeal; 2)cancellation of the contested Tripa license issued by the Governor of Aceh (then Yusuf) on 25 August 2011; 3) an order to the current governor of Aceh to withdraw the contested State Administrative Decision issued by Yusuf on the plantation permit to PT.